This piece of flash fiction was written for Writer’s Digest’s 2021 February Flash Fiction Challenge Day 8. One and some change were spent on this piece; this is the fifth draft of the story. The prompt: “Write a one-sentence story.”

Nentev IV

Having dutifully carried out their orders from the crown, Admiral Saito and her crew stood rigid on the bridge of the star-carrier Justice, silent as the ship drifted away from Nentev IV, once a planet of three billion souls, now a blazing inferno of demolished civilization lying under billowing white mushrooms, the price of sedition against the Divine Monarch’s absolute and righteous—and Saito guardedly believed, petty and cruel—rule.